Chapter Five
There were two problems with taking ballet lessons. The first was that Garret was losing weight. Of course, the two-a-days in hundred-degree weather also had something to do with that, but still. College teams were looking at him because of his height and build. The teams that were interested in him wanted him as a blocker as much as a receiver. The second problem was that it was getting harder and harder to hide his ballet lessons from his friends and his dad, who didn’t want him to go to college at all. He expected Garret to take over the salvage yard.
Though Elliot probably wouldn’t be on board with him having anything to do with The Untouchable, given her reputation, he was the only one Garret trusted to spread a rumor about him running into Isabelle while taking his sister to ballet class over the summer, or something like that, in case anyone found out he was at the studio. As for his dad, it was better to keep everything secret for as long as he could.
“Mitchell! Get your head in the game.” Crap. He rushed back to the huddle. “Yes, sir!”
“You okay?” Elliot asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s do this.”
He stopped on the line of scrimmage and waited for the whistle. He was supposed to be blocking, but Godfrey fumbled the catch, deflecting the ball up. Garret sprinted forward and leaped for the ball, then ran it for a touchdown.
Coach waved him over. “I’m seeing a difference in you. Looks like those lessons are paying off.” He winked, then shouted, “Defense. What the hell was that?”
Not wanting any part of the scolding they were about to receive, he went back toward Elliot, who high-fived him.
“Man, I’ve never seen you jump that high for the ball. I thought tight ends were supposed to be big, not bouncy. Did they give you a bionic arch or something? I demand that you spill your secret, or I’ll tell the entire team you’re dating The Untouchable.”
His heart stuttered. “What?”
“You called her Harley Quinn at orientation the other night, and she didn’t eat you alive. What’s up with that?”
Garret sighed in relief. His friend didn’t know anything. Elliot was trustworthy, but some of the other guys on the team weren’t. He jerked his head to the left and walked to the other side of the field. “Can you keep a secret?”
“You know I can.”
“Coach suggested I take ballet lessons to recover from my injury, so I am. At the studio where Isabelle dances.”
Elliot held his hand out. “I demand that you turn over your man card right now.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought at first, too, but like you just saw, it’s working.”
“That’s why you seem different. Even better than last year. Maybe I should take ballet lessons, too.”
Garret glanced around, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to them. “No way. I don’t think it would help with throwing. Besides, trust me. You don’t want to.”
“So The Untouchable is as bad as we always thought?”
Though he wouldn’t talk smack about Isabelle, he also wasn’t going to sugarcoat what she’d done. “It’s kind of a long story. Coach set me up with a regular dance teacher, but Isabelle saw me at my first lesson, and she’s blackmailing me.”
He laughed so loud several of their teammates turned to see what was going on. “How?”
Garret told him everything, including her blackmail demands.
“Wait.” Elliot held his hands up. “You’re going to do a ballet performance? That I have to see.”
He shook his head. “No.” That wasn’t gonna happen. “Right now, I’m just letting her give me free lessons for as long as it lasts.”
“Okay, but what happens when she finds out you’re not going to dance with her? Do you really want everyone to see that video?”
He ran his fingers through his hair, debating how much to tell him. “Look, I feel sorry for her. She’s kind of in the same boat we are. She wants to join a professional ballet company when we graduate, and this performance will be her audition. Kind of like us getting scholarships to get the heck outta here.”
“That I understand, but c’mon. The Untouchable is bad news.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think she’s entirely evil. I’m hoping I can convince her to give up on the blackmail scheme.”
“Good luck with that, dude. She thinks she can have whatever she wants because of her father’s money, and you know how protective her father is. He probably has hit men on his staff.”
Elliott was taking it too far. Senator Oster had a reputation for winning no matter the cost, but he’d never been accused of anything illegal. “I don’t know about her dad, but she’s not so bad.” In truth, he kind of liked her, but there was still no way he was going to dance on stage with her.
“You girls done gabbing over there?” Coach yelled.
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison, and rushed back to the line of scrimmage. The gods of timing had favored him.
Coach looked slowly over the players lined up in front of him. They were all about to get their asses handed to them. “You know what happens on Friday?”
“Our first game, sir!” they yelled in unison. It was a scrimmage, but still a must win for them.
“That’s right. Are you ready?”
“Yes, sir!”
“I don’t think so. Let’s see how you feel after some running.”
A collective groan rolled across the field.
“Forty seconds to the opposite sideline and back.”
Everybody scrambled to spread out and get up to the line before he blew the whistle.
“Go.”
The timer clicked, and Garret took off, rushing back to the starting point at full speed. Once he caught his breath, he noticed he’d been the third person to finish. Either everyone else was tired, or he was getting faster.
The ballet lessons were definitely helping him, but he had to figure out a way to keep taking them without having to dance in Isabelle’s performance. Even if he offered to pay her, he was afraid she’d be so mad she’d play the video anyway, and it wasn’t fair of him to leave her hanging after she had helped him. There had to be a way to find someone else to dance with her.
Elliot stopped beside him and bent over to catch his breath.
“Come on, you pansies. We’re already at fifty seconds,” Coach yelled.
It didn’t seem fair to make the linemen run that fast, but he wasn’t about to bring that up with Coach. He valued his life.
After three more sideline runs, they got a water break. While the rest of the team drank, Weisert found a hose and turned it on all of them. It felt fantastic. As was the norm in West Texas in August, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the sun beat down on them relentlessly, even at eight o’clock in the morning. The grass outside the fencing was brown and dry, and the mulberry trees lining the parking lot were already losing leaves because of the drought.
“All right, ladies. Next drill. Anybody seen the movie Miracle?”
Garret had. Not good. This was gonna hurt.
“Go line up in the end zone.” Once everyone was in position, he continued. “You’re going to run the yard lines. Start with the ten, then back over the line into the end zone. Then out to the twenty and back, thirty and back, etc. The first ten guys to finish are done for the day. The rest of you will get to do it twice. Everybody understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Go!”
There hadn’t been time to strategize. Should he start fast, or keep an even pace? Hell, did it matter? His legs were on fire by the time he hit the forty-yard line. By the time he crossed midfield, they were numb. It hurt so bad he thought about using his hands to lift his legs up to make it back to the end zone for the last time.
The moment one foot touched the line he dropped to the ground, too tired to determine who else had finished before him. There was no way he could do that again. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to walk to his car.
Elliot fell down next to him about thirty seconds later. Once he was able to catch his breath, he said, “I was tenth. We can go.”
“That’d be great if I had the energy to get up.”
“Yeah.”
“If we don’t leave, do you think he’ll make us run again anyway?”
A string of expletives shot out of Elliot’s mouth. “We better get up.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Neither of them moved.
…
Half an hour later, they had showered and were slamming down half-price milkshakes at the Dairy Hut.
“My legs are getting stiff. I’m not sure I’ll even be able to practice tomorrow. What was the point of that?” Elliot asked.
“That things can always get worse.”
Elliot grunted and sucked up the rest of his shake. “I need fries with this.”
“Isn’t that on the list of things we’re not supposed to eat?”
He nodded. “So are milkshakes.”
“We should be eating lean protein and whole grain carbs instead of all this junk.” Though Garret wanted to get his weight up, eating crap wasn’t the way to build muscle.
Elliot pretended to read the menu. “Ain’t nothing lean or grainy on here.” He tossed it back into the holder. “Have you heard from any schools yet?”
“East Texas and Texas A&M. Coach thinks The University of Texas will be interested, and he’s got contacts there.”
“Dude, why don’t you look happy?”
“I want to get out of Texas. Away from the heat, the salvage yard, and my dad’s expectations.”
Elliot nodded. “I hear that. Where would you go if you had your pick?”
“Somewhere north. Michigan or Ohio would be my top choices, but they’ve got so many good players up there I doubt they’ll ever consider me way down here.”
“Talk to Coach. I bet he’ll have some suggestions. He wants one of us to go to a big name school as much as we do.”
Garret nodded. “Where are you looking?”
“The community college in Permian Basin.”
“C’mon. They don’t have a team.”
“Garret, you know I’m not going to get recruited. I’m too small. And too slow.”
“Don’t pull that crap with me. Just because you might not make it in the pros doesn’t mean you can’t get a college gig. How many public universities are there in Texas? You’re a shoe-in for one of them. You need to talk to Coach.”
“Yeah, all right. I suppose it can’t hurt.” He sucked down the last of his milkshake. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
“Hey, before I forget. Are you interested in helping out at the salvage yard? My dad wants to clear an acre on the north side. He’s offering minimum wage. Off the books, of course, so it’ll be cash.”
Elliot shrugged. “When?”
“We’ll start on Saturday and see how long it takes. He can’t afford to pay a lot of guys, so there’ll probably only be four or five of us.”
“Sure, I’m in. Is that one of the old sections that’s never been excavated?”
“Yep.”
“Maybe we’ll find something cool.”
“Most likely a bunch of rusted crap, but you never know. Are you ready to head out? I have a dance lesson in twenty minutes.”
Elliot snort laughed. “Those are words I never expected to hear from you. Think you can do it after that workout we got at practice?” He stretched and winced.
“I have to try. Harley Quinn won’t take no for an answer.”
“Yeah, I still think you’re stupid to trust her, but at least you’re getting all these free lessons.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Though he still wasn’t 100 percent sure he could trust her, either, there was a vulnerability to her that made him think she wasn’t as tough as she seemed. He wasn’t the kind of guy who used a girl for his own benefit then kicked her to the curb without another thought.
His only hope was to find someone else to dance with her, but if she and her dance teachers couldn’t dig up anyone, he stood a better chance of seeing a snowstorm in Brinson in July than locating someone.